SOCCER: Chivas USA fires coach Jose Luis Sanchez Sola

If Chivas USA wasn't off to enough of a rocky start to the MLS season, the footing just got a lot trickier.

Colorful coach Jose Luis Sanchez Sola was fired late Wednesday night, hours after it was revealed the club was hit with a racial discrimination lawsuit by two former coaches of the club's youth academy.

Sanchez Sola, known as "El Chelis," was barely one-third into his first season as coach of Chivas, which hasn't won in its past six league games and is in last place in the Western Conference with a 3-7-2 record.

The timing of the firing and the lawsuit on behalf of Dan Calichman and Ted Chronopolous, the former Chivas academy coaches, might be curious but Chivas USA and its Mexican parent club, Chivas of Guadalajara, have taken strange twists under owner Jorge Vergara.

The official statement from Chivas USA said that the club "mutually agreed to part ways with (Sanchez Sola) due to the team's poor performance on the field."

After Chivas' 4-1 home loss to Real Salt Lake on May 19, Sanchez Sola said: "This is what we have. We don't have anything else. I'm proud of everything the players do every day. This is just our level."

He added that he had not spoken to Vergara since his hiring in late 2012.

"Since his hiring, S nchez Sol had at his disposal a competitive team with the institutional premise of a formal interaction, based in communication in which the club listened to his petitions to incorporate players approved by him. However, he was not able to reflect it with results," the statement from Chivas said.

"While serving as Chivas USA Head Coach, S nchez Sol not always followed the patterns of respect and conduct implemented by Major League Soccer, as well as by Chivas USA."

El Chelis will be succeeded by 60-year-old Jose Luis Real Casillas, a veteran of the Mexican League. Real Casillas coached the Guadalajara club from 2009-11.

Chivas also announced that Marco Antonio Fabian Vazquez, 36, will be an assistant coach. He has been an assistant coach at Guadalajara and a technical director for Chivas youth programs.